Chicken Bhuna Curry Recipe (version 1) Review

Hi, Ray here again. Time to try another delicious recipe from the Curry Focus team. This time it’s Chicken Bhuna, another great chicken recipe.

All I had to buy was the chicken and I also picked up a pack of frozen chilli and garlic paratha (yum).

I had avoided cooking this recipe because there were so many lines in the method part of the recipe. But I’m getting used to cooking nowadays and making the dish was really easy.

I did the usual and prepared everything before I did the cooking. This time one of the guests volunteered to help so I them chop up the onion and ginger whilst I prepared the chicken.

Then a little plate of spices followed by the garlic and green chillies – I only used 2 green chillies because one of the dinner guests didn’t like spicy hot curries.

Then the cooking started.

I heated the butter and mixed in the garam masla. Then I coated the chicken in the mixture. I didn’t need to do the chicken in batches because my large frying pan was big enough to hold everything with ease.

The oven was already preheated by the time I had coated the chicken. I put the chicken and half a can of tomatoes into the casserole, mixed them up, put the lid on the casserole and put it all in the oven for 20 minutes.

Halfway through, I cooked the onion and ginger in the butter (there’s a lot of butter in this recipe – yum).

Then in went the plate of spices for a stir-fry.

After that I added the cup of water and simmered for 5 minutes before adding the rest of the ingredients.

I then tipped everything into the casserole, with the chicken, and mixed it all up and finally popped the casserole back into the oven for the last 25 minutes of cooking.

When this was happening, I chopped up the bell peppers and started cooking the rice.

And then I messed up – I forgot the chopped fresh tomatoes and left them happily in the fridge. I didn’t realise this until the next day when I was reviewing the recipe. Doh!! Never mind, I don’t think it detracted from the curry.

When the rice was nearly ready, I quickly heated up the paratha.

I served up the chicken bhuna on rice, garnished it with the sliced red peppers and served up a plate of paratha for the assembled dinner guests.

It all went pretty well with the bhuna having a wonderful flavour. Except the guests thought that the garnish of uncooked red peppers was a bit odd. The peppers “lacked flavour” and would have tasted better if they had been quickly fried to soften them up. There are critics everywhere!!!

One guest commented that a bowl of raita would have gone down well with the bhuna – the bhuna had a spice/heat rating of “medium” but they felt that the tastes would have complemented each other. Maybe they were right – I love raita.

All in all, the meal was voted a success and scored a rating of 7.5 out of 10 with a medium heat ranking.